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Overview:
This PhD project is part of Core Project 6 on "Technology Adaption and impact" of the "Cluster of Excellence" PhenoRob: Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production" financed by the German Research Foundation.
The core project 6 studies the adoption potential and related impacts of robotics and phenotyping (PhenoRob) technologies on agricultural development, welfare, and the environment at farm and landscape scales. It involves collaboration between agricultural economics and informatics and engages with projects across the whole cluster in order to understand the conditions under which PhenoRob technologies may contribute to sustainable agricultural transformation. As a key long-term output, we develop an agent-based model (ABM) of technology diffusion. The ABM serves as a virtual laboratory that allows us to explore the relevance of alternative economic theories and related empirical phenomena for the diffusion of PhenoRob-type technologies in crop production. The sub-project assesses impacts of novel PhenoRob technologies in German crop production at farm-scale based on bio-economic modeling to inform the ABM.
Contribution
Our group contributes to core project 6 by:
Systematically collecting data on existing and emerging PhenoRob technologies in German crop production
Extending the bio-economic farm-scale model FarmDyn based on the collected data on PhenoRob technologies
Assessing the impact of PhenoRob technologies by simulations across farm samples with "FarmDyn" with regard to various sustainability indicators
Related publications
Kuhn, T., Enders, A., Gaiser, T., Schäfer, D., Srivastava, A., Britz, W. (2019): Coupling crop and bio-economic farm modelling to evaluate the revised fertilization regulations in Germany, Agricultural Systems, Link.
Kuhn, T., Schäfer, D., Holm-Müller, K., Britz, W. (2019): On-farm compliance costs with the EU-Nitrates Directive: A modelling approach for specialized livestock production in northwest Germany, Agricultural Systems 173: 233-243, Link.
Staff working at ILR on the project
Christoph Pahmeyer, PhD student, project realization
Wolfgang Britz, project lead

This work is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy - EXC 2070 - 390732324".
Last updated: Saturday, December 21, 2019
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